Everyone in a certain generation has Michael Jackson stories, it befits the whole phenom.
-
I checked out the album, yes the record album "Thriller" from the
freakin' public library in Michigan City because I wanted to hear the
Jackson/McCartney duet "The Girl is Mine". I was a hopeless Beatle
fanatic back then. I listened to the duet several times, but never the
other tracks. What would I have thought if I had just played, for example, "Human Nature"?
I took the album back to the library, where no doubt it
was promptly stolen forever. I'd love to know how long it lasted on the
racks.
- Fast forward about 10 months or so. I was in Chicago
with a companion and we walked from bar to bar on Division Street and
every joint had Thriller playing. EVERY joint. It was f**king surreal.
I will never forget it.
- Next odd McCartney/Jackson pairing...Say,
Say, Say on McCartney's record "Pipes of Peace". Who still has that album. Anyone?
Bueller? NOTE: There is also a duet track with the two called "The
Man". McCartney broke with Jackson after he advised him to start buying
music catalogs, and of course then MJ bought The Beatles songs.
-
Last week, at the "Just for Laughs" Fest, Robert Smigel of "Triumph the
Insult Comic Dog" fame showed his Michael Jackson cartoon (TV Funhouse,
SNL). It was a take-off on Hanna-Barbera, with an assorted group of
"friends" helping Michael try to stay away from little boys. My
favorite was the bones of the Elephant Man, who sounded like Jimmy
Durante (it's even funny as I type it).
Michael ends up in the
cartoon catapulting, Wile E. Coyote-style, into a boys swimming pool
(he doesn't make it, squashes himself – Wile E. Coyote-style – off the
wall).
Smigel related that Jackson's lawyers put a ceast-and-desist on the cartoon the Monday after the airing.
-
Finally, tonight, I'm in a nightclub after covering a film event. In
tribute the DJ plays the club version of Billie Jean at the decibel
level of a jet airliner taking off by your ear.
"You can really appreciate the bass line," I screamed to my friend.
The Man in the Mirror, no reflection.
POINT.AFTER
Farrah
also dies, geez. How many boys of the era thought salacious things
while propagating salacious acts in the era? Points standing way up
high. I'm just saying.
What is wild is how was this starlet in
particular picked from the cosmos to become a phenomenon? How does it
happen to any of us?
FF, sometimes M, RIP.
